The Hunger Games (Movie Review)

As just a movie, The Hunger Games is OK. Not great, but good. Highly entertaining at some points, but not nearly as gritty or as epic as it could have been. Knowing that Suzanne Collins was involved in the screenwriting, I knew that many punches would be pulled. Collins does not seem to embrace the violence that fills the Panem she created. Too much of it happened off page in the novels, and now off screen in the first movie.

Watching the movie yesterday confirmed what I believed after reading the series: Collins was not a big fan of who Katniss was in The Hunger Games novel. Collins transformed Katniss throughout the novels, and the Katniss of the movie was more reminiscent of the Katniss of Book 3 (Mockingjay) than the one of Book 1 (The Hunger Games). That’s a negative, but the story was still good enough to earn the film 3 solid stars from me.

If David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is at one end of the scale in what do you keep/what do you drop/what do you modify between a book and its movie and Oprah Winfrey’s Beloved is at the other end, The Hunger Games resides closer to Oprah than it does to Fincher.

I don’t understand some of the decisions that were made. I’m not one of those “the text is sacred” people. What I am is someone who actually liked Katniss as she existed in The Hunger Games novel. The character is a different person in the movie, and I did not like her. Thing is…I’m not sure if she’s supposed to be a different character. I’m not sure if they changed the character of Katniss or if they neglected to show enough of the peripheral stuff in the movie that we can’t tell if she is the same character or not.

The first noticeable thing to me was that Katniss of the film is not hardcore, and Katniss of The Hunger Games is—and needs to be—hardcore. Although only a teenager and still in school, Katniss is her family’s primary source of food and income. Her only concern is that she survives—which requires winning the Games—so that her sister and mother do not starve without her. The film shows her hunting, but I don’t think it comes across clearly that her hunting is what keeps them from starving. I know the beginning goes so quickly that people don’t understand that Gale is her only friend in the world. Novel Katniss is a socially awkward, introverted person. She does not play well with others. There are times during the movie when she says she is not good at making people like her, but the audience is given no evidence of that. Novel Katniss has a terribly short temper. She is standoffish and quick to respond to the minutest of perceived slights. She is someone who drives people away from her. The only glimpse of this we see in the film is her pinning Peeta against the wall after he publicly admitted his crush on her. She is not a nice person. This is, I feel, an important omission.

Along those lines, Novel Katniss has had neither the time nor inclination to think about any sort of romance or love life beyond the declaration that she will never have kids. At the time we meet Katniss in the book, she has never had a romantic moment with a boy. The film treats Gale as if he was her boyfriend, though he’s not. Her first kiss onscreen is the first kiss of Katniss’ life, but the audience has no way of knowing this. If they are going to change this, if they are going to make movie-Gale movie-Katniss’ boyfriend, they should have been more explicit about it. The ambiguity is not good. The particulars of the Katniss-Peeta and Katniss-Gale relationships shapes most of Katniss’ plans and goals in Catching Fire, the second installment of the trilogy. The ambiguity also keeps us from getting a clear picture of what, exactly, are Katniss’ motivations for what she does throughout The Hunger Games, especially when her interactions with Peeta. Does she care about him? Or does she just realize that her survival is dependent upon convincing people that she does? In the book, we know; in the movie, we do not.

Those things only feed into my three biggest issues with the movie: Katniss’ relationships with Peeta, Rue, and the Capitol. Movie-Katniss was too personable. Katniss is a cold, calculating young woman. As portrayed by Jennifer Lawrence, her moments with Peeta come across as emotional ones, but in the book, she’s playing for the cameras, trying to get sponsors, gaming the viewers. I doubt many people who saw the movie without reading the book realized Katniss was faking it. Feelings for Peeta are not something Katniss contemplates at this time. She’s never contemplated these types of feelings for anyone before. The film does not make this clear. Again, we are left with ambiguity. One thing that should have been omitted from the film, but wasn’t, was Peeta’s alliance with the tributes from Districts 1 and 2. It would have been difficult to explain that without text, and they never addressed it later. As is, that alliance makes no sense and leaves viewers wondering what they missed.

Rue. I love Rue. How can you not? Last night, my Twitter timeline was flooded with tweets by people who were emotional about Rue. It really bothered me how much Rue’s importance was downplayed in the movie. She was so much more important that we got to see on screen. Remember how I said Katniss had no friends? Rue was able to penetrate that. To Katniss, Rue was Prim in the arena. Katniss saw her as a sister. Her time with Rue represents the first moments of tenderness Katniss ever displayed toward someone who did not live in her house.

When Rue was killed, I expected to see her glare into the television cameras or yell some words of condemnation toward the Capitol. We didn’t get that. And because they never showed the Capitol ships flying in to remove the corpses, we did not know the cold, disrespectful way the dead tributes were treated. The flower bed Katniss made for Rue was in response to that, not just who Rue was. It was a calculated move by Katniss done specifically to show up the Capitol. That was followed by Rue’s people sending Katniss a loaf of bread as a gift. Katniss and Rue had been starving, and Katniss would have had a tough time lasting longer without that bread. This is the most important scene of the entire trilogy, and they left it out of the movie. Instead, they showed Rue’s district begin to riot. The bread marked the first time in Hunger Games history that a district had provided a gift for a tribute from another district. It was a gift of appreciation for what Katniss had done for Rue, which was to show respect and tenderness and love in a place where those things were all but forbidden. That moment galvanized the districts—not just in violence, but in cooperation with each other. Leaving out that loaf of bread is analogous to telling the tale of the American Revolution while not mentioning the Boston Tea Party. Sure, you can do it, but the story won’t be nearly as rich or complete as it could and should be. It really bothered me that Rue, what she did for Katniss, and her role in the revolution, were underplayed.

And then finally, they messed up the end. They turned Katniss' defiance, Katniss calculatedly turning the game against the gamers into some Romeo & Juliet nonsense. What we see on screen is a Katniss who doesn’t want to go home without Peeta. What we read in the book is a Katniss is pissed at the Capitol for reneging on a deal. We also see a Katniss who is still ready to kill Peeta if necessary. It was, in my mind, the second-most important moment in the book, yet it’s completely rewritten in the film. That was the second moment that truly sparked the revolution. Katniss was openly and defiantly going against the Capitol. Peeta was irrelevant. That moment was Katniss versus President Snow, and it set off a blood feud vendetta. Instead, it was rushed in the movie, a mere afterthought.

Overall, the biggest difference was that the film took the calculating mind away from Katniss. It took away her vengeful personality. It took away her intimidation. It made her, rather inappropriately, docile, which is the last thing you want, when you're starting a world-changing revolution.